Taylor Colaizzi, 2022 NIST Research Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Washington & Lee University

Taylor Colaizzi, a rising senior double majoring in physics and music at Washington and Lee University, is excited to join the SPS team as an intern at NIST this summer. A Johnson Scholar and Questbridge Scholar, Taylor is president of the Questbridge Chapter on campus and enjoys volunteering at the local Habitat for Humanity in his free time. A member of the Instrumental Conducting Mentorship Program, Taylor leads the upper woodwinds in the University Wind Ensemble as well as the bass section for the internationally-touring University Singers. Taylor’s campus employment includes working at the ITS HelpDesk and serving as a Teaching Assistant for the Electrical Circuits course. Outside of academics, Taylor loves spending time with his family and dog Shaggy, and he enjoys riding roller coasters at his hometown’s amusement park, Cedar Point. After graduation, Taylor plans to pursue a Ph.D. and teach future students at the post-secondary level.

Internship

Host: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Project

Abstract

Scientists often wish to study complicated signals affected by extreme noise. Lock-in detection is one method used to isolate these desired signals. By amplitude modulating a carrier wave with the desired signal, a lock-in amplifier synchronizes to the reference wave and extracts the phase and amplitude of the signal while rejecting the noise and other waves present. Unfortunately, lock-in amplifiers tend to be large, expensive, high power machines that are difficult to incorporate into small form designs. To address these problems, the commercial software-defined radio seems like an excellent candidate because it isolates signals and rejects noise while also having a small size, low cost, and low power consumption. Furthermore, software-defined radios present additional benefits by being able to synchronize to frequencies higher than most lock-in amplifiers, read signals from various types of modulation, and interface directly with computers via the aid of open-source software. In our research, we demonstrate how a commercial software-defined radio can be used in conjunction with open-source software to analyze problematic signals in physical experiments.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1 : Burgundy Car

The Honda went through the gamut the week before I drove to Washington. To make sure everything was as it should be, I replaced the car’s tires, poured in fresh oil, and asked the mechanics for a fine look-over. Then, I double-checked the insurance and registration paperwork before renewing my driver’s license at the local DMV. Next, after I installed an E-ZPass and registered into AAA (for the peace of mind!), it was finally time to send the car on its journey. The only thing left was to wash the car and fill the tank.

I had never driven to Washington, D.C. before. Actually, I’d never driven to nor through any major U.S. city in my three years driving on American roads and highways. I was a bit nervous, since I’d heard that the 9-lane Capitol Beltway could be treacherous! But still, despite nerves holding me back, I packed my belongings, loaded some classic CD’s, and treaded carefully with the aid of my cell phone’s GPS. It was time to drive!

The other interns are a delightful bunch of incredibly intelligent and kind individuals who love helping others. We readily bonded (is that a chemistry joke?) and shared our stories of travel and of past physics experiences. The support from SPS and AIP is phenomenal, and I’m entirely confident knowing we’re in their capable hands. This summer, these opportunities, will be transformative for us all.

I work at NIST this summer. There, I engage in technology research under Dr. Charles Cheung. My first task: convert a small digital radio into a highly-capable lock-in amplifier, which is generically an expensive piece of signal processing equipment. It sounds tricky, but the theory is simple. Radios already do the same work that lock-in amplifiers do: they extract weak signals from copious levels of background noise. The challenge will be to push the radio to its limit, to see how fast it can run and how high a frequency it can reach. This could be a project that finds its happy resolution in just a couple weeks. It could also be eternally doomed from the start. But, we don’t know that yet! All we do know is the end goal, and we try to reach that with the tools in our laboratory and the determination in our hearts.

Week 2 : America, The Dream Goes On

It’s the second week of our internship. Here are some FAST THOUGHTS!

I experimented with a genuine lock-in amplifier to best learn how my radio substitute should operate in the context of a scientific environment. This was an excellent opportunity to explore the laboratory environment, and I’m glad I had the chance to grow more acquainted with some of the tools there.

Now that I have gained access to my work computer and email account at NIST, I can finally dig through those 212 (actually 212, this is not hyperbole) unread emails that have piled up since I was approved to work at NIST. Hooray! At least it’ll keep me occupied for a while. :)

You can hardly go wrong offering college students a free luncheon. But, a luncheon with Nobel Prize in Physics Laureate Dr. John C. Mather? That’s priceless. And hearing his story and perspective on learning and society as a whole was enlightening and inspiring on a whole different level. Thank you for this wonderful experience!

The last time I attended a professional baseball game, I was a hormonal little teenager who didn’t know how to have fun. This time, I had a blast! The conditions were perfect: it wasn’t too hot, the stadium was sparsely packed, and the home team was playing great. Would you believe me if I said I watched the Nationals hit two home runs back-to-back? And then hit another homer an inning later? It sounds too good to be true, but feel free to look at the scorebooks. It takes talent to write home with a score of 11-5!

I had only heard about The Rocky Horror Picture Show before this week. I knew it was a strange film (actually shot on film!) with a fanatic following of fans, but I didn’t know what to expect. Today, I can happily say I enjoyed the movie, had a great time, and participated in the related shenanigans!

The monuments downtown are splendid sights at night. The setting sun paints a beautifully serene backdrop for the massive structures to rise into. They rest there, motionless, as street goers and tourists promenade through the columns and trees nearby. Representing great achievements in the United States history, they remind us of the greatness our country must pursue in the future.

We hold the responsibility for pushing our country into a modern globalized society. We must show the world that the USA is here for preservation of the land we and others use for survival. Take pride in what is here now, and work to make what comes next worthy of our pride as well.

Happy Pride month!

Week 7: A Busy Signal

At work this week, I enjoyed testing out the radio’s ability to detect and isolate complicated signals using a few function generators lying around the laboratory. My advisor, Dr. Cheung, helped me set up the test signal, which is really just an amalgamation of four function generators triggering and modulating off of each other. After tuning the dials such that the waveform seemed reasonable according to the oscilloscope, it was time to send it to the radio and see how it liked it.

Overall, the radio seems to do its lock-in amplifier job quite well considering what it’s built for! By choosing a high enough sample rate and implementing the appropriate filters, we can yield a mostly convincing final output that sort of resembles the unadulterated signal we’re searching for. If we send in square wave modulation, we pull out a square wave in the final result. If we do the same thing with a sine wave, the result is even better. Unfortunately though, if we push the sample rate all the way up into the megahertz where we want it to be, we experience strange spiking phenomena. Our gut says this is the hardware’s limitation manifesting itself in the data, but we’re still not sure exactly what’s happening in the first place. All we know is that periodically, samples get dropped from the bitstream, and the remaining points’ values tend to be wobbly near where the error occurred.

Outside of work life, our Dungeons & Dragons adventuring party enjoyed their third gaming session where the heroes delved deeper into Muglosh Mine, searching for treasure. What greeted them below the surface were beasts, undead, and aberrations with an intense thirst for living flesh! All-in-all, the party has had much success in staying alive throughout the campaign, even amidst all the creeping creatures crawling about. We’ll have to see next time how they manage to escape with as much loot as they can find!

It’s a pleasure to be working in Washington, D.C. with such caring and wonderful interns around me. I’m always so pleased by how supportive and understanding my coworkers are when things don’t always go as planned. This isn’t an easy work environment to come across when searching for summer internships and research jobs, and I am so thankful to be part of this amazing crew. Thank you for the opportunity to be part of your team!

Week 8: Switches and Glitches

This week, Dr. Charles and I installed GNU Radio onto the laboratory computer to see if we can use the software-defined radio in conjunction with a physical experiment. We haven’t yet gotten around to testing out a live experiment, but we are very close! We just need a devise a way to synchronize our radio with the experiment, and then we’ll be able to use the setup as a measurement device. It’s very exciting! But moving to that level is going to be tricky. We’ve got to dig into the source code that makes the software tick and see exactly how they go about with their plotting modules. Once we understand those, we can build our own that does just what we need.

After installing the software to the computer, I wrote up an instruction document on how we went about the process. Since it involves writing instructions directly to the command prompt, it was important to make sure everything was spelled out correctly. Luckily, the entire process only takes approximately 45 minutes!

I am so blessed to have seen my family on Monday and Tuesday this week as they drove by for a family vacation. My mom had never been to Washington, D.C. before, so this was her first time in the area! I loved getting to explore the city and share a little more time with them before the internship officially closed.

On Thursday, we finally carried out the big tour of NIST’s campus that Dr. Joseph, Valeria, Div, and I had been planning for weeks prior. This was a super fun event, and I’m sure the others enjoyed themselves all day! I personally found the acoustical anechoic chamber and NIST Center for Neutron Research to be particularly fascinating. It’s wonderful that we could share our workplace with the other interns so they could see some of the groundbreaking science that’s happening just a short drive down the road.